Moustapha Alassane

Moustapha Alassane is born in 1942 in Niger. After being initiated to cinema techniques by Jean Rouche (ethnologist and documentarist), he studies with Claude Jutra and Norman Mac Laren in Canada.
His first short is Aouré (Mariage), an ethnographic documentary about the traditionnal wedding in a nigerian village, in 1962. He is the pioneer of the animation in African, with the first animation movie in 1965, The Death of Gandhi. Le retour d'un aventurier, a kind of african western is shot in 1966 : a nigerian was in USA, and comes back to the village, with bags full of cow boy outfits. His friends and him are recreating an american dream in Africa.His movie Femme, Villa, Voiture, Argent, widely casted in subsaharian Africa illustrated the danger of freed.

He realised some 30 movies, animation films but documentary and features.

He recieved the Legion d'Honneur in 2007.

Ressources :
http://www.africultures.com/index.asp?menu=revue_affiche_article&no=1447 interview by Olivier Barlet in 2000.
http://www.planeteafrique.com/Niger/Index.asp?affiche=News_Display.asp&articleid=107&rub=Arts-Culture about nigerian cinema.

Books :
Gaël Teicher, Moustapha Alassane, Montreuil, Ouagadougou, Editions de l'œil, Sarkofa & Guirli, 2003
« Un jeune cinéaste nigérien, Mustapha Alassane, réinvente le cinéma », Bingo, octobre 1969, p. 48-49